Ischemia-reperfusion injury frequently occurs when the flow of blood to a region of the body is temporarily halted (ischemia) and then re-established (reperfusion). Ischemia-reperfusion injury can occur during certain surgical procedures, such as repair of certain aortic aneurysms and organ transplantation. Clinically ischemia-reperfusion injury in manifested by such complications as pulmonary dysfunction, including adult respiratory distress syndrome, renal dysfunction, consumptive coagulopathies including thrombocytopenia, fibrin deposition into the microvasculature and disseminated intravascular coagulopathy, transient and permanent spinal cord injury, cardiac arrhythmias and acute ischemic events, hepatic dysfunction including acute hepatocellular damage and necrosis, gastrointestinal dysfunction including hemorrhage and/or infarction and multisystem organ dysfunction (MSOD) or acute systemic inflammatory distress syndromes (SIRS). The injury may occur in the parts of the body to which the blood supply was interrupted, or it can occur in parts fully supplied with blood during the period of ischemia.
International Patent Publication No. WO 96/01318 relates to polypeptides other than interleukin-10 (IL-10) allegedly having one or more properties similar to those of IL-10. Among the very long list of diseases allegedly treatable with these non-IL-10 proteins are tissue damage as a result of "hypoxia/ischemia (infarction: reperfusion)", "ischemia", "reperfusion injury", and "reperfusion syndrome". However, there is no evidence in this publication that the non-IL-10 proteins would actually work for treating all of the diseases in the long list.